Tilly’s Inc. CEO Dan Griesemer said he sees more of the same in the third and fourth quarter, although the action sports retailer has not provided guidance on for the back half of the year.

 


“I think this pattern of robust shopping during the need to buy and softness in the non need to buy will probably continue,” said Greisemer, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Retailing Conference. “It has been a river dropping a little bit in those kind of more discretionary time periods, and it’s not lead by anyone channel or category or brand or anything.”

Griesemer defined the need-to-buy periods for Tilly’s core 14-to-24-year-old demographic as being back-to-school, Black Friday through the weekend after Christmas, Spring Break and the end of the school year.
Despite high teen unemployment rates and other macro-economic headwinds, Griesemer insisted Tilly’s will continue competing by merchandising on-trend brands and products rather than matching competitors’ discounts at the mall.


 

“We’ll be aggressively marketing on email and online and through social media,” he said, “but what you won’t see us do is take a percentage off the store in order to affect some sort of short-term result.”

 

Griesemer deflected a question about how the financial struggles of surf companies like Quiksilver and Billabong were impacting the industry.


“I kind of defer talking specifically about surf,” he said. “We look at the actions sports industry in general, and say the industry is capable of newness and innovation and rejuvenation and morphing in to whatever is relevant to this action sports inspired kid. It’s much broader than surf and skate.”